Body adiposity index and other indexes of body composition in predicting cardiovascular disease in the Chinese population: A Cohort study.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the ability of four obesity indicators, including waist circumference (WC), body mass index (BMI), body adiposity index (BAI), and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) on prediction for incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Chinese Han population.

Methods: We analyzed data from a prospective population cohort of 3598 participants aged 35 to 74 years from Jiangsu China. The logistic regression model was used to analyze the association between four obesity indicators and CVD risk. The ROC curve was used to assess and compare the diagnostic performance of four obesity indicators.

Results: During 8 years (median 6.3 years) of follow-up time, 82 CVD endpoints were collected during follow up (36 men and 46 women). After adjustment for age, smoking status, alcohol consumption and family history of CVD, in men, WC, BMI, and BAI were associated with triglycerides (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and hypertension. In women, WC, BMI and WHtR were associated with TG, HDL-C, hyperglycemia and hypertension, BAI was only associated with HDL-C, hyperglycemia, and hypertension. ROC curve analysis indicated that BAI have the highest area under the curve to identify CVD, and BMI has the lowest area under the curve to identify CVD in Chinese males. WHtR has the highest area under the curve to identify CVD, and BMI has the lowest area under the curve to identify CVD in Chinese females.

Conclusions: CVD risk was more consistently correlated with BAI in Chinese men and more consistently correlated with WHtR and WC in Chinese women.